Tag Archives: Eukonkanto

When you first start to think Finnishness a lot comes to mind like Finnish forests, lakes, sommercottages, four seasons especially winter, wintersports, means to us etc. I could go on and on about those, but here are already great posts about those subjects.

So I decided to write about some crazy sports we have in Finland

Eukonkanto (wife carrying)

Eukonkanto is a sport, where man needs to race through obstacles while carrying his partner upside down. The winner wins his partner weight in beer. For this entertaining sport worldchampionship contest is held every year in Sonkajärvi since 1992. There the track includes one meter deep water jump and two fences you need to climb.

(Note: There is no rule that man needs to carry, it can go eitherway. But the one onboard needs to weight over 49kg.)Source: https://finnicalmatters.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/wife-carrying-championships-eukonkanto/

Suopotkupallo(playing football in a swamp)

Some say the idea came from Finnish skiers strength training did on a swam for this sport. But no matter where it came from Finns has had their own championship contest since 1998. Since that the contest has grown into the world championship, which is held in Hyrynsalmi.

The rules have a big resemblence to football, but there are quite a few differences. The playing fiel is only 60 meters long and 35 meters wide, so it only makes sense that a goal is also smaller being only 2 meters deep and 5 meters wide. The game includes two rounds each lasts ten minutes. Each team has max. five + one player on the field same time.
Photographer: Pekka Honkakoski (http://ukkohalla.fi/suopotkupallo/)

As a sport in Finland we carry our wives.
There is even world championship race of wife carrying kept here. Race is kept in a track modified to meet the standards of Wife Carrying Competition Rules Committee. Track is 253,5 meters and the wife carried can be yours or someone elses. (If you’re brave enough it can even be your neighbours wife!). Wife also must meet the standards of WCCRC: she has to be at least 17 years old and weigh over 49 kg (~108 lb). The contestants run the race in groups of two couples, and the winner is the couple who has the shortest time. To make the race more interesting for everyone there is also awards for most entertaining couple, best costume and the strongest carrier.

Mämmi

The culinarities of Finns. You may have heard of the strange recipes of Finnish people, which include rye bread, salty liquorice and mämmi. Mämmi is sweet traditional Easter dessert in Finland. It is traditionally packaged in birch bark bowls, called rove or tuokkonen. It can be consumed with or without cream and sugar, both of which give mämmi a little bit sweeter and more dessert like taste.

Jokamiehenoikeus

In Finland you have this rare thing called ’Every-mans-right’ which gives you right to enjoy Finnish nature to the fullest. It still does not mean you can do whatever, where-ever. It gives you a possibility to go camping, go fishing with a fishing rod or jig and during your visit to the wilds you can also eat some berries! But you must know that there is limits to these rights , so you better make friends with the Finnish people first so they will tell you the basics.

Welcome!

This blog is your window to Finnishness. Here you will find blog posts written by students of Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) describing their personal experiences and notions of being a Finn or living in Finland. This blog is part of the course "Intercultural Experiences and Competences" and was started in spring 2016.

You can use the tag cloud to find posts with specific contents, and to find posts from a specific month, use the navigation at the bottom of the page titled “Blog Post Archive”. Feel free to leave comments as well! Enjoy!